


Old Magick, New Path

by CatChan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Time Travel, Consent is Sexy, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Good!Salazar Slytherin, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Porn With Plot, Sex Magic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:34:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 18,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22963207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatChan/pseuds/CatChan
Summary: Her first reaction upon reading the old books of Grimmauld place was incandescent fury. Why the hell was this not taught at all, not even freaking mentioned at all, in any book she’d ever read at Hogwarts, despite going through quite a bit of the Restricted Section.{Despite having passed into disuse over time, Sexual Magick remains one of the strongest and fastest ways to ward up a home. The rituals involved have long since been fine tuned, as providing a safe space for one offspring has always been amongst the foremost goal of young couples.}{In very extremely rare occasion, when two wix whose magicks are extremely compatible engage in the sexual rituals with similar purposes, their magic may call to one another and make them resonate until they come to occupy a shared ritual space}
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Salazar Slytherin
Comments: 107
Kudos: 308





	1. Chapter 1

Her first reaction upon reading the old books of Grimmauld place is incandescent fury. Why the hell was this not taught at all, not even freaking mentioned at all, in any book she’d ever read at Hogwarts, despite going through quite a bit of the Restricted Section.

Why did she bust her ass laying ward after ward after ward to keep herself and Harry (and Ron, when he was there) safe, when such a simpler way existed right from the start?

_{Despite having passed into disuse over time, Sexual Magick remains one of the strongest and fastest ways to ward up a home. The rituals involved have long since been fine tuned, as providing a safe space for one offspring has always been amongst the foremost goal of young couples.}_

Ron took a step back when she viciously slammed the book on the kitchen table, and pointed at it. “Were you aware?” She simply asked, pointing an accusing finger at the title: The Magick Of Ritual Sex.

Harry stared alternatively at her and the book, looking faintly alarmed. Ron turns tomato red. “This is old junk Hermione…”

“You are telling me that all this time, there were ways to use powerful magic, Light Powerful Magic, to protect ourselves, no less, and you never thought to mention it to me?”

“I wasn’t even sure it was real, Hermine, those are practically myths…”

“Myths. You mean like the Deathly Hallows?”

Ron stared at Harry. Harry stared at Ron. Hermione threw her hands up in disgust, took the heavy spellbook from the table, and turned away from the boys. “I will be in the library, studying arcane spells that could potentially save a lot of lives if anyone ever bothered to remember they exist!”

“So,” Ron said once Hermione had disappeared up the stairs, “do you suppose she’ll ask me to help out in her new study material?” He didn’t seem that thrilled with the idea.

Harry shrugged. “You better hope so mate, because she’s not about to let go of her new study material, and at the point she wants to get practical, it’s either you help her out, or she’ll either go it alone, or she’ll have someone else take the place.”

Ron slapped a hand on his eyes. At least, Harry looked as awkward as he felt talking about sex (or Hermione having sex) with his best mate.

As it turned out, studying sex spells was _not_ one of Hermione’s passing fancies. Upon researching some more, she’d discovered that not only could any willing (or sometimes unwilling, but she wasn’t touching _that_ ) couple, group, and even a fair few loners absolutely could use sex spells not only to protect themselves and their families of threats like Voldemort, but some of it could even be used to lighten the house elves’ (or homemaker’s) load.

The spells, though ancient, were straight forward and hard to mess up (at least no more difficult than potion, that was for sure), they could be used by any witch or wizard, and even some Squibs. It only required for the knowledge to be assembled and made available instead of moldering in the back stacks of private and dubious personal libraries. That and to have a society a smidge less puritan.

Hermione had a plan to make such things available, and it involved printing her own book. Which in turn involved lots of researches, cross-referencing, study of theoretical magic, and, of course, testing stuff herself to ensure all the rituals were actually safe to perform and still usable.

In a word, Hermione thrived in her new subject matter.

By the time she had selected which rituals she wanted to try out first, it had become obvious that Ron would not, in fact, be the one to perform the rituals with her. She wasn’t that fussed about it. The passion had fizzed out after the war ended, it was regrettable, but not alarming. They were still best of friends, still lived in Grimmauld place with Harry, and Hermione had a wealth of rituals that didn’t actually require a partner to go through. In fact, going by the way of masturbation would eliminate one unstable variant, which in turn would make her experimentation more trustworthy.


	2. Chapter 2

Hermione Granger slid her robe down her arms and draped it over the feet of her bed.

She locked the door, then put on a few additional locking spells on the door itself, and did the same to the window, before putting on a silencing ward. The only way for anyone to hear her inside, or, indeed, to come in, was for Hermione to call her code word, at which case the boys would be alerted and able to barge in.

The boys were aware as to what she would be doing, and had awkwardly tried to make conversation around it all morning. She wanted to scoff at their squitishness about sex, of all things, but she’d restrained herself from doing so. At least she was sure they would not try to come in unless it proved absolutely necessary.

She took deep breaths, and strolled, naked, around her ritual circle, checking the markings over and surveying the position of her ingredients and candles.

Everything seemed well in order, so she tried to relax as best she could, as the books suggested.

It was going to be alright, she had this in hand, it was nothing but a simple purification spell, Merlin knew the house needed it, even if she failed to complete her ritual correctly, there shouldn’t be any adverse effect, the raw magic would simply dissipate without doing anything.

She fussed with her voluminous, frizzy hair, decided she didn’t want it sticking on her face in the middle of the ritual and tied it in a ponytail. Then she decided it was pulling too much, and redid the tail but only with the upper portion caught in, then loosened the band down a bit so she wouldn’t be uncomfortable.

All her fussing done, she stepped in the ritual circle, and knelled down, trying for a comfortable position. Once she felt like she could move well, stay stable, and not have her legs fall asleep beneath her, she flicked her wand at the candles to light them, then tossed her wand on the bed with her robes. She wouldn’t be needing it for the ritual, these rituals predated wands.

She centered herself, and meditated until only her wish for the house she lived in to be Lighter stayed in her mind. She stumbled a bit with the next step, but she was nothing if not determined.

She passed her hands over her breasts, willing herself to feel heat, trying to imagine another’s hand on her, hmm, strong, calloused hands, like Viktor’s.

She would be doing this with another, someone who admired her wit, who understood her and didn’t ridicule her for wanting to learn. She would let someone touch her who was also interested in the ritual, and what good it could bring, someone to gather the magical energy with. Someone who wanted her.

She felt a shiver of comfortable warmth travel up and down her spine. She was doing alright, then. Keeping the image of her perfect lover to the forefront of her mind, she skimmed one hand lower, past her abdomen and into the thatch of hair at her crotch. She leisurely fondled the hair there, unhurried, and adding each new sensation to the reserve of magic she was building.

Slowly, she inched her hand down, to prod at the folds and dips of her sex, still trying to feel as comfortable as she could, and refusing to hurry anything, in fear that she’d bunggle something.

She circled her fingers around her clit, before coming back center to prod and pinch at it, and left out a gusty sigh as she felt the fire raise tentatively inside her.

This was when she heard she heard a deep sigh that was definitely not her own. She opened her eyes, surprised, and couldn’t help but stare.

There was a man, kneeling opposite her, in what seemed to be the same ritual circle as her own, if not for a few modification, and the fact that Hermione was sat on hardwood when the man seemed to be kneeling over a nice rug thrown over granite floor. Behind him stood a bed, unmade, and very old fashioned furniture.

The decor only held her interest for a fleeting second, as her eyes returned to the man.

Just like Hermione, he was naked, and just like her, he had a hand on his genitals. The other was curled around the back of his neck, head lolling forward. At the moment all she could see of him was his impressive shoulders, arms, legs and stomach muscles, and a curtain of dark hair hiding his face. But it was already quite the spectacle, especially as her gaze couldn’t stop drifting to the man’s penis, loosely held in his hand.

“Oh,” she breathed softly. Not softly enough, as his head snapped up, eyes wide open, he stared at her face for a moment, before he too was distracted by the room(s) around them, and then by her naked body. She flushed despite herself.

He had a nice face, piercing grey eyes, sharp cheekbones and sharper jaw. He didn’t look like he could win against Lockhart at the most charming smile award, but he quite frankly didn’t need to smile, the slack pleasure on his feature was quite alluring on it’s own.

Hermione breathed in sharply and tried to remember exactly what the obscure warning in the book had said about the sudden appearance of someone in the circle.

_{In very extremely rare occasion, when two wix whose magicks are extremely compatible engage in the sexual rituals with similar purposes, their magic may call to one another and make them resonate until they come to occupy a shared ritual space}_

She wasn’t sure of the wording further on, but it had assured that the ritual spaces would dissociate again within hours of the end of the ritual, and she’d dismissed the worry that it could happen to her.

She cleared her throat, the man blinked at her. He opened his mouth, and Hermione was startled at the words that went out of his mouth. She’d read plenty of Old English before, but had never heard it spoken, so she was more than a little surprised that she could understand him at all. “By all the gods(?), magic found me quite the pretty mate.”

“Oh.” Was all she found to say at first, she blushed some more, then cleared her throat “I am Hermione” She said in shaky Old English.

“Sal, at your service.” The man, Sal, answered, with a disarming smirk and a suggestive eyebrow waggle.

That was the point at which Hermione realized that she was still fondling her own boob, and had a hand not so innocently resting on her crotch. Not that Sal was that much better, but. Well, it was weird.

Then the sexual magic she had accumulated so far flowed back through her, demanding, and all of a sudden things felt less weird and more hot. She debated between instinct and reason for a while, then decided that if she and the stranger were magically well aligned enough to share this ritual space, she could trust him for a brief fling.

Slowly, she removed her hand from her breast (the other one was quite damp at that point and she didn’t feel like tracking her fluids all over a stranger first thing) and reached out until she could touch the man’s elbow, she then proceeded to drag her hand slowly up his forearm until her hand rested over his, at the nape of his neck.

He removed the hand from underneath hers, and tentatively reached for the breast she had been cupping. When she sighed at the touch, he seemed to relax and shuffled closer to her “Ever done this, Hermione?”

She bit her lips, and shook her head. It was her first ritual, and the first time she had sex with anyone, not for lack of wanting, but because she had been too afraid to fail, and the stress had kept her from appreciating more than a good snog.

Here, in front of a total stranger, she felt much less stressed, he may judge her sexual prowess as lacking, but it wasn’t as though she’d see him much afterwards, she was free to let go a bit.

“Then I will enjoy teaching you.” Sal said matter of factly. She could approve of that. She liked teaching too, and if he thought himself his teacher, he wouldn’t hold her missteps against her.

he shuffled forward on his knees, and she did the same, gently tangling her hand in the hair at the nape of Sal’s neck, he hummed appreciatively and removed his other hand from his dick to put it on Hermione’s hip, looking at her questioningly.

She nodded and he heaved her up and onto his lap. Slowly, she removed her own hand from her folds, and reached over to fist his erection for him. he groaned. “First time?” He repeated, sounding a bit dubious.

She frowned. “I can read books.” She answered forcefully, making him laugh.

“Good” was all he had to say on that subject, then he carefully lowered Hermione onto her back, and scooted down to lick at her opening. Hermione was almost overcome by shyness, but the magic in and around her swiftly changed her blush of shame into one of pleasure. she buried her hands in his hair and arched up right into his waiting mouth with a murmur of his name.

He raised his head to smirk at her use of his name, then came back down again, adding his hands to the mix. It didn’t take long after that for Hermione to come, gasping Sal’s name in between pants.

Sal straightened, looking pretty happy with himself, and slid up her body, forcing her thighs open incredibly wide as he did.

He pushed down on her a bit, just enough so his engorged member nudged at Hermione’s stomach, and shot her a look. “Yes?”

She blinked at him for a second, dumbstruck, before she caught his meaning. A part of her mind went whirling about protection, before she remembered that the circle she was using had contraceptive runes in it. She took a bracing breath and nodded. “Yes.”

He was careful as he eased himself in, stroking her face gently and murmuring reassurances each time she panicked and clamped down. Well, at first she clamped down out of nerves, but then she linked his slack jawed expression with her spasms, and she soon figured how to squeeze on purpose just to see him close his eyes and breathe in sharply.

She did it five times before he coined in, at which point he laughed a deep throaty laugh that she could feel down to her intimate zones. It didn’t feel like he was laughing at her, but rather with her. he called her clever, and inched a bit further in, then he might have called her a goddess, unless he was swearing, she was not up to translating spoken Old English in this situation.

She wriggled wantonly and consciously relaxed her inner muscle to let him finish to come in, and he did with just a moment of hesitation.

She felt his body try to rock out and in again, but he masterfully restrained himself from doing so. She squeezed a bit as a recompense, earning a quiet groan in her ear for her trouble. She smiled and murmured his name again, before sliding a hand up to the nape of his neck where she’d extrapolated that he liked to be touched by his lovers.

His hands hurriedly skated down her body until she could feel two large, calloused thumbs pressing right into her clit, making her blank out again. She distantly felt him ramming in her passage twice, before he stilled and growled her name. It felt wonderful.

No less wonderful was the sudden surge of raw magic surging through her body for a glorious second, before she felt it leave her and rush to her surrounding. She couldn’t ascertain just how well the cleansing had worked, since she was locked in a single room, but she felt the air she was breathing in become less cloying, and the bit of her walls that she could see seemed to have lightened.

Something similar was happening on Sal’s side of the ritual room, and she smiled victoriously at him. “We succeeded.” She said, fumbling only a little with the pronunciation.

He chuckled, then rolled off her. Hermione felt a little bereft at losing the warmth and the firm pressure of his body over her, but she made no move to follow him. She didn’t want to be weird and clingy to a man that she’d only met because they were sharing a magic ritual.

But. with a start, she recalled that despite their recent, and very pleasurable coupling, he had not kissed her even once. She could kiss him, right, it wouldn’t be that forward considering where he’d very willingly put his mouth before.

She sat up and took stock, she was sweaty, her hair was half in her face, and he was there looking deliciously rumpled and slowly blinked at him.

She reached her hand toward him tentatively, and as he made no move to avoid it, tangled her fingers in his dark locks. Sal closed his eyes and hummed, so she bent down and kissed him.

He put his hand in her hair and pulled her more toward himself so he could deepen and open up the kiss.

By the time he let her go, she was panting, and would probably not have objected to a third round.

She took a deep breath, and bowed toward one of the candles to blow it out and dissolve the common ritual space. Sal nodded at her and heaved himself up and toward one of his own candles.

Hermione blew, and she was fully back to her room in Grimmauld place. The only proof that she hadn’t dreamed the whole encounter was the stickiness making it’s way down her thighs, and the few interesting aches in her body.

All in all, Hermione was quite satisfied with her first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm unsure about adding a short chapter from Sal's POV, it feels like if I do it, I'll find myself left with an epic, but on the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to know what he's up to?
> 
> Feel free to comment, I love comments, and I may take request (as long as they inspire me)


	3. Chapter 3

The effects of the ritual could be seen immediately.

Sure Grimmauld place was still dark and dank and grungy, and dusty, and, well, dirty, but all of a sudden the shadows were only shadows, and the grime wasn’t the first thing everyone saw anymore. Hermione was quite pleased with her ritual, but there was a part of her brain that was going over all the rituals in the grimoire, looking for exactly the effect she wanted.

She needed a Cleansing ritual, unlike the purification that only affected the magic in the place, a thorough Cleansing should physically make the house easier to clean up. Sure, the house would still need work, and effort, and paint and wallpaper, but she was hopeful.

Especially since she first saw Kreacher after coming out of her room. The house elf was still dirty and old, but it seemed to her that he was less hunched on himself. Of course, the old elf showed his appreciation in a very understated way, meaning that he no longer grumbled and complained about the presence of vermin in his great house, but she would take what she could.

Even Harry and Ron had sensed the effects of the ritual. She brushed off the awkward thanks she she got from from them with a smile. It was nothing, she was just getting started on this house, and on her project to rehabilitate the old rituals.

There was just a huge glaring hole in her plan to publish a book and be done with her self appointed mission: Sal.

At first she waffled back and forth about telling her friends about her encounter, in one hand, they were no longer at war, and she didn’t need to tell them everything all the time, plus, they were bound to be extra awkward and to try and butt in her personal life out of a misguided attempt to protect her, on the other hand, she’d grown to adulthood telling these two idiot almost everything, all the time, and she really wanted them to know about the development of her project.

It took her five days to reach her decision. She would mention Sal, but only if they asked her about all the extra research she was doing despite her ritual going well.

It took the boys a while to actually ask, but she was blaming Auror training. Hermione blamed a lot on Auror training, since she wasn’t in it, and from her outside perspective, it really looked like the boys were only doing it because they had once thought it was what they wanted to do, and they’d never bothered to give it a second thought.

She really had the feeling that Auror training was only deepening the trauma of the war in her best friends, but she refrained from saying so, because Ron would accuse her of making everything about her. And he might even be right.

At the end of her eighth year, when Harry and Ron received their acceptance letter from the Auror school, and they asked her what she was going to do, she’d poured her heart out to them. She had told them she was no longer sure that her ‘changing things from the inside’ approach would be successful, and would in any case not go anywhere fast.

She was famous now, there were better ways for her to change people’s mind on their treatment of magical creature than becoming a paper-pusher for the ministry.

Harry was already rich anyway, and he had made himself very clear that what was his was also Ron and Hermione’s. She’d only hesitated for a moment, before telling herself that yes, she had been willing to die for Harry since she was twelve, she had lost her parents to the war, she had shared the burden of the locket Horcrux, yes, she could accept Harry’s generosity.

She had moved in Grimmauld place, unsure exactly what she was going to do next, and dove straight into the library, where she had found the book about sexual magic, amongst other things, and she’d decided she was going to change the world by writing books. In the meantime, she was staying at Harry’s, because Harry wanted her to, and because her presence kept Ron from refusing Harry’s proposal out of misguided pride.

So yes, asking Ron or Harry to quit Auror school would probably be partly her projecting her issues on her best friends, so she didn’t. She drowned herself in her research every day, only emerging to share Kreacher’s meals and inquire about the boys’ day. On the weekend, she helped them do whatever they wanted to do, and spent some time just existing in the same space as them with a book on her lap that she was only half paying attention to, while she watched Ron repeatedly beat Harry at chess.

It was on one such evening that Harry enquired about the old English dictionary and a very old tome pertaining to accidental time travel.

“Oh, I met someone in the ritual, and I suspect he was from the past.”

“You met someone? But you were, you were locked in your room. Alone! Do you have a stalker?”

Hermione shook her head, warmed by Ron’s concern. “No, I told you, I think he’s from the past.”

“But how did he end up in your room?”

Hermione raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Ron. “Magic. Raw, Wild magic, it seems that the compatibility of our magics and the quantity of magic around us during the ritual enabled us to pass through the veils of time and space to end up sharing the same room despite how far they originally were.”

Ron choked on nothing. Harry rubbed Ron’s back with a little smile, through he was turning a bit red in the face himself. “During the ritual... do you mean that you were both…” He gestured wildly.

“Naked and down to fuck?” Hermione said dryly despite her blush. “Yes.”

Ron looked like he was about to expire out of blushing too hard. Harry was not that much better, but he nodded. “And did you…”

“Yes.” She answered shortly. Ron opened his mouth, wearing his face from right before he started bellowing, so she continued. “Twice.”

Ron went on another coughing fit. Harry stared at her. “Hum… was it… good? I mean, he didn’t force you or anything, right? You look fine, but...”

Hermione couldn’t help the tender smile that stretched her lips. “Yes. Yes, Harry, I was fine with it, and it was good. Now I just have a problem, because I still intend to compile and publish a book on using sexual magic, but since Sal was from the past and ended up more or less in our time for a while, it might actually be dangerous to spread information about the rituals. Playing around with time is dangerous, even more when you don’t know that you’re doing it. So I need to cross-reference accidental time travels, with the theory of using wild magic to be sure that this type of… occasion... isn’t too dangerous. I might end up having to spend a good long time speaking with the unspeakables to sort this all out.”

“Wait, wait,” Ron interrupted. “Sal is, well whoever he is, how do you know he’s from the past?”

“He spoke to me in Old English, you know, the language that came before Middle English.” She shrugged. “Right now almost nobody has access to resources necessary to practice sex rituals, so it’s logical that he’d be from another time, and judging from his room and his language, I’d say he’s from about a thousand years ago.”

Ron gaped at her inelegantly. “And you had sex with him?”

“Yes, twice.” she repeated, feeling a bit sorry for Ron, but also pretty vindicated. It was her problem who she did or did not sleep with, she and Ron had broken up amiably a few months before, after all. And he had a new girl he was crushing for.

“You never wanted to do it with me!” Ron yelled, making Harry look very uncomfortable.

“Yes, well, it’s different.”

“How is it different?”

“I didn’t know Sal, okay.”

“How is that more okay than having sex with me?” Ron demanded at full volume, making poor Harry cringe as far away from them both as he could while still seating on the same couch as Ron.

“Because I didn’t feel crushed by the weight of your expectation!” She yelled back, exasperated, and she kept yelling. “He called me pretty, he asked for my permission to touch me, he made sure I enjoyed myself, he was a perfect gentleman from start to finish, and then we blew on a candle and it was done, I never have to see him again if I don’t want to.”

“Of course you’re not seeing him again,” Ron snarled. From the corner of her eye, she saw Harry flinch almost strongly enough to send himself on the floor, “You’re not going to go do these stupid ritals again.”

Hermione breathed strongly through her nose to try and temper her impotent fury and keep herself from pitching a priceless, ageless book at Ron’s head. “Do you presume,” she asked softly, “to tell me whether I can have sex?”

Ron froze, probably feeling the thin ice he was in. “Huh.”

“Did I ever need your permission to do what I want with my magic and my body, Ron? Is that what you’re driving at?”

Ron wisely stayed silent.

Hermione stood from her chair, taking her books in her arms. She was still shaking with barely repressed fury. “You will never again speak to me like that, Ronald Weasley, and I will be doing whatever the hell I want, up to and including Sal, whenever I want, and I will not be asking for your permission to do so.”

Ron swallowed and nodded weakly, retreating deeper into the couch.

Hermione left the room. Ron and Harry stayed silent until they heard the SLAM of Hermione’s door, then Harry piped up. “You screwed up, mate.”

Ron sighed. “Yeah… Do you think she’ll forgive me?”

Harry grimaced. “If I was you, I would grovel for a while.”

Ron groaned. then he stiffened in terror. “Do you think she’ll tell mom? Or Ginny?”

Harry’s eye widened. “Maybe you should start grovelling right now just to be safe.”

Ron swallowed, then he went out of the house to apparate at Hermione’s favorite bakery.

It took a while for Hermione to thaw back toward Ron. Almost as long as to get the necessary information regarding accidental time-travel relating to Raw Magic, so she could ascertain that it was indeed safe to share a ritual with Sal again, in the improbable chance that he would share this one too.

Hermione announcing that she’s going to do a Cleansing Ritual on the house and not to disturb her went over without a single grumble, though Harry smiled weakly and bid her to “stay safe” She just smiles at him. Ron’s face is carefully exempt of any emotion.


	4. Chapter 4

Preparing for her second sex ritual felt much more purposeful, and… sensual. She felt a bit like when she had prepared herself for the Yule Ball with Viktor. Not that she intended to use full cauldrons of Sleekeasy this time. Firstly, because she would feel quite daft if she dolled up all the way, and then didn’t have Sal’s company for her ritual. Secondly, because she didn’t want to come across as ‘trying too hard’ if he did appear. And thirdly, because either way, potionning her hair was a hassle and would take her hours.

So she flitted around her room in a bathrobe, checking the circles, lighting the candles and rectifying the runes, until her jittery feeling went away, then disrobed and stepped in the circle.

She forewent kneeling, thinking she may be less awkward while touching herself while on her two feet, and cleared her mind.

The image of her perfect lover came in easily, it looked a lot like Sal, but she could be forgiven on the grounds that he was the only person she ever had sex with which was bound to skew her fantasies a bit.

Hermione pictured hands on her body, the firm, warm pressure of skin against her own, about Sal’s face when she did something he liked. She wasn’t eve touching anything intimate when the borders of her room blurred, then solidified again with much more bare stone, and a tapestry hung on one wall.

Hermione barrely paid the room a second of her attention, as her gaze caught the man kneeling in front of her. “Well met.”

The man jolted, then looked up at her. Sal, there was no mistaking him for anyone else, though he seemed somehow… Off, comparing to what she remembered. He had a small scar she never noticed above his left brow, and his Shoulders seemed broader.

If Hermione was to describe the change, she would say he looked older, by a couple of years or so. He looked to be around twenty, when he’d still obviously been an older teen before. But it was still Sal.

“Well met, Hermione,” Sal said easily, rocking back to a crouch, then unfolding himself graciously up to his feet. “You look as beautiful as I remember.”

Hermione blushed a bit more at the compliment, but smiled nonetheless. “It wasn’t that long ago, though?” She managed to answer, much more smoothly than the last time she tried to speak Old English.

Sal looked confused. “It was.”

She frowned thoughtfully, then the obvious answer came to her. “Right, time magic… I don’t think we’re aging at the same rate. Our ritual was five months ago, to me.”

Sal blinked at her, then he shrugged. “Magic will do as Magic wills. Your English is much better.”

Hermione tried her best not to blush at the compliment, she was better at Old English because she’d spent a lot of time perusing old grimoires, mostly. She may have sounded out words while thinking about Sal, but she was mainly researching.

“I have been reading in your language a lot.” She answered noncommittally, before slowly lifting a hand up to rest on Sal’s shoulder. He smiled and hummed a bit at the gesture, so she took half a step closer to him and slid her hand to the back of his neck, then raised herself on her toes to kiss him.

The kiss started out gentle, but heated up fast, lips and teeth coming in to play as Sal snaked a hand around her waist and pulled her flat against his muscled abdomen. She could feel his dick hardening against her stomach, and it was one of the most sensual moment of her life so far.

His hands hadn’t wandered down yet, staying safelly on her back and at her jaw, while hers were draped over his shoulders and around his neck pulling his head closer, yet she felt herself heating up, the magic around them thickening noticeably.

They separated with quiet gasps, and she opened her eyes to look at his face. God he was so sexy, with his pupils blown, and his self-satisfied smirk, and his interest made obvious by the member throbbing close to her belly button.

Oh she wanted. She wanted everything, she wanted to pull him to her bed and test every single thing she’d read they could do back when she had wandered in a muggle library to research what their book had to teach her about sexuality.

She put a finger on his lips when he looked like he was going to kiss her again, and squirmed out of his hold to go fetch her folded up comforter from her bed. She made a quick job of spreading it out in the middle of the circles, careful not to upset any lines or ingredient, then gestured Sal down.

Sal crouched next to her with a smile as she kneeled back up. “Forward thinking, I like that in a partner.”

Hermione blushed, more pleased with this simple compliment than the earlier ones on her appearance. Yes, she was smart, and it was great to have a lover who noticed it.

She smirked back and pushed on Sal’s shoulder until he sat back, then straddled his thighs. Sal laughed and let one of his hands rest on Hermione’s backside. He bowed his head and applied his mouth to her neck, making her shiver in delight.

She tentatively reached toward Sal’s cock, pulling her neck back from his lips to get his attention. “Yes?” She repeated his own question when it was him taking initiative.

He glanced at her hand and smiled broadly. “Yes.”

She breathed out and wrapped her hand around his erection, cataloguing the soft skin and warmth in her head for later use. Remembering his face when she clenched on him, she tightened her fist around him, looking in his face for signs of discomfort, but earned a groan instead.

A part of her wanted to play around, to experiment with pulls and twists, and find out exactly how Sal liked to be touched, how to make him come with just her hands. Another part was reminding herself that men had a recovery period after orgasms that was significantly longer than women, and she could feel her core pulsing with need.

She hummed, then hoisted herself higher, then forward, using her hand to guide him to her already drenched opening.

Sal made a small, strangled noise as she carefully lowered herself around him.

As she rocked back a bit and seated down further, she saw him lean back on one hand, and reach the other toward her breasts. She smiled in invitation, and resumed to her slow descent, relishing in the feeling of fullness.

Sal, it turned out, was happy enough to let her take control, but couldn’t just lay back and let her do the work.

His hand wandered up and down her body as she moved up and down, then tangled in her hair to pull her in a series of heated kisses, that he only stopped with a cry to still Hermione’s hips at the end of a thrust. She watched in wonder as his eyes closed, his jaw jumped, and he actually whimpered, before taking a slow, deep breath and nodding to her.

So that was what his face looked like when he tethered on the edge of orgasm? It was beautiful.

Before she knew it, she had knocked him down flat on his back. They almost came apart from her enthusiastic lunge, and she mostly wouldn’t have minded, too occupied with clutching Sal’s shoulders and kissing the breath out of him.

“Ah,” He moaned when she sat up a bit. “So passionate.” He sounded so good, breathless and awed.

“My name.” She grunted back, rocking herself back and forth around him, and clenching her core’s muscles for good measure. “Say my name, Sal.”

And so he did, Her name sounded so good on his lips, the slight mispronunciation from his Old English accent making it even better.

Hermione’s hands clenched harder over his shoulders, and she moaned loudly as, with one more thrust and clench, she felt herself start to come.

She fought the urge to close her eyes to the white haze of pleasure, gasping, and looking at his surprised face.

She was at the edge of giving up and letting her eyes close when he bucked up into her, mouth open around a silent cry of pleasure. She drank in all the details of his blissed out expression until the both of them slumped down, spent.

Once again, Hermione felt half of the heavy magic power gathered around them flow through her like a river of feathers, relighting the banked warmth and making her tighten her muscles one last time, before it was gone and she could breathe fully again.

She could feel Sal’s pants under her, lifting and dropping her ever so slightly in turn.

She slowly came back to her senses, Hermione gathered the strength to move up, then of Sal, only to be interrupted by his arms tightening around her.

She looked up at him. His handsome face was pulled in a small, soft smile that stripped her of any resolve to move away from him. She hummed. “Sal.”

Hermione relaxed, going limp over Sal’s chest, and earning a chuckle from that. She gave herself a few minutes to recuperate, her hands petting Sal’s shoulder, fingers moving slowly in a light caress. Her left hand found a scar, and started following the line of it. “What made that?”

“A sword.”

Hermione blinked back to the present. She’s only ever seen two swords, Gryfindor’s sword, and it’s copy. But Sal was from a time where sword were common enough that he’d gotten a wound from one of them.

She hesitated to speak up, but she was feeling so happy and relaxed. Her nature was shining through, making her more like the small know-it-all that couldn’t keep her knowledge to herself.

“I’m from the future.” She said, then shut up before she could word-vomit for a full minute.

Sal’s eyes came down from his contemplation of the ceiling to look in her eyes. “Indeed?”

She hummed, looking away from his face. “Yes. It’s, well, it’s the year 1999, counted from Jesus’ birth.”

Her eyes came back to Sal’s face. He looked surprised, but nodded nonetheless. “That… It’s farther than such a ritual should be able to reach.”

Hermione nodded. “Maybe our magics are really very compatible.”

“They have to be.” Sal said, voice steady and free of accusation. “Otherwise the ritual would never have brought us together, but this is… really unlikely. A whole millennium... “ 

“Magic will do as Magic wills?” Hermione tried.

“Quite.” Sal smiled, then he moved to sit up, and Hermione removed herself from his chest to let him.

His gaze turned inquisitive as he examined her room, his hands coming down to fist the comforter. He blinked slowly and glanced down at the fabric, gathering a corner close to examine it. “This is very fine. Are you Nobility?”

Hermione shook her head. “No… The standards for living have just gone up.”

“Well, this is heartening. To know the future holds such possibility.”

She looked away with a smile, relieved that Sal was taking the whole incredible time travel well. Her eyes landed on the circles around them, and she idly followed the lines with her eyes, trying to decipher the use of Sal’s own circle. “This is… healing?”

Sal glanced at her, then down at his circle. “Yes. My mother…”

Hermone let him trail off without pushing. She knew worry for one’s parent better than she wished. “It’s strange, though.” Sal’s eyes jumped back to her, he was frowning. “Our circles are not similar at all.” She rushed to explain.

Sal’s eyebrow went up, and his gaze moved to her circle. “A cleansing?” Hermione nodded. “For a place, not a person.” He added confidently. She nodded again. “It is strange. Maybe I can enquire on magical ritual partnering to a master.”

Hermione felt her enthusiasm plaster itself all over her face. “Oh, could you? This whole thing is fascinating, but sex magic has fallen by the wayside, and there is no master or book I can refer to, all I have are shaky hypotheses, and that’s really not enough to publish anything on the subject. I want such an useful magic to come back to our time, but I can’t really bring it to light again when I don’t even know it’s really safe, and I really have to understand how this whole thing works before I can do anything.”

Sal was giving her an amused look by the time she finished, and she blushed, her and her lack of brain to mouth filter. “For you, my fair lady, I will endeavor to find out more.” Hermione’s face felt hot all over and she was afraid of how red she must be. “Your command of my tongue is impressive.”

Hermione bit her lip to keep herself from making an horrible pun, but by the look Sal was giving her, she had to have let enough on for him to guess where her thoughts went. “Thank you.”

“You are very welcome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am needed.”

Hermione nodded, and watched his gorgeously muscled back as he bent to blow out one of his candles.


	5. Chapter 5

Hermione didn’t have much time to worry about anything, as the day after her ritual uncovered a fatal flaw in her plan to renovate Grimmauld place via sex magic: by removing the dark influences, she had damaged the century old Black wards, leaving it frailer and full of holes.

Thankfully, Harry’s possession of the townhouse wasn’t widely known, and thankfully they caught it early on, thanks to an owl winging in when it should not have been able to pass the wards.

It was fanmail for Harry, and was simply addressed to Harry Potter, the owl had to be an exceptionally clever individual, since she was one out of twelve who made it to Grimmauld Place.

Still, the house had to be warded all over again, and fast. Thankfully, she had studied all the circles and theories before she even started, so she was able to pinpoint the damaged wards and patch them over, then locate the appropriate rituals to permanently replace the corrupted magic.

As a result, it was only a week later that Hermione found herself in the center of an intricate ritual circle, ghosting her fingers over her skin while thinking about all the delicious faces Sal made when he was in her.

It was anything but a surprise to see Sal blurr in in front of her. He looked just as good as before, despite a not so small detail that jumped out at her right away.

“Well met, Sal. I like the new look.” She made a gesture around her chin to indicate she was talking about his beard.

“Well met Hermione. And thank you. It’s finally growing even enough that I don’t need to shave it to look tidy. Have I ever mentioned how well nudity suits you?” Sal tagged on with an impish grin.

“You never saw me with clothes on, Sal.” Hermione tried to sound peevish despite the blush she could feel creeping on her skin.

“True, and I can’t say I regret it.” Sal raised his eyebrows at that, and made a gesture halfway towards her waist.

Hermione smiled back, shaking her head at his ridiculous ways, and stepped closer and right in his arms. She raised herself on her toes to kiss him, and he reciprocated immediately.

The kiss started sweet and slow and chaster than anything they had done so far, but devolved into a dance of tongues soon enough.

She chuckled softly when Sal’s hand unerringly found its way to her backside, and he smiled back, letting his hand dip lower, caressing her thigh before making it’s way back up and re-settling firmly on her ass cheek. She laughed and shook her head again.

They kissed again, for too long, maybe, because it gave Hermione the time to think, and to review all the sex things she had read about.

Sal looked a bit surprised when she jumped up and threw her legs around his waist, using her hold on his neck and shoulders to help herself up, but he took her weight without any apparent difficulty, and his hands migrated to the back of her thighs to hold her up better. Hermione, whose head was now above Sal’s took the opportunity to kiss him again, her hands leaving his shoulders to cup his jaw instead.

He hummed into the renewed kiss, and took a step, assumedly to balance himself and Hermione better. When her mouth moved from his mouth toward his cheek, he took a deep breath. “Are we meant to make love standing up, then? Because I am unsure how well I will stand if you keep being so passionate.”

Hermione sat back up, and looked at him. “Oh, fine, if you want to be unimaginative, we can always do it on the floor.”

He laughed, even as he transferred her weight to a single arm and tightened the other around her waist. “Oh, trust me, imagination is not the problem, I can envision us in many positions, but I’d prefer to have a wall to brace against if I have to hold the both of us up in the throes of passion. Which you have a lot of.”

Hermione pouted, but she unwound her legs and let Sal put her back down. “You can’t blame me for my passion. Have you even seen yourself?” Sal raised a single eyebrow at the question. “You look like all my adolescent fantasies put together. It is quite unfair.”

Sal took the compliment with a solemn nod, then a slight teasing smile, and oh, she wanted to lick him. She could in fact lick him, so it’s what she did, starting in the beautiful dip of his collarbone and across to his shoulder. He shivered and made a very interesting breathing in noise.

“On the floor, was it?” He asked, backing up a bit to see her better. She nodded, and turned around to go fetch her comforter again. Just because they were supposed to have sex inside the magic circle didn’t mean they had to be uncomfortable while at it.

She sat down on the fabric and leaned back over her arms to look up at him. “Waiting for something?”

He shook his head and sat. “You are beautiful.”

“You already said that.”

“It bears repeating. I can’t help but wonder what your beautiful lips would look like, wrapped around my name.”

She snorted. “Really, just your name then? I’ve said your name plenty, Sal...”

“Salazar.” He cut her. “My full name is Salazar.”

She blinked. Gaped, blinked again. “Salazar.” She repeated slowly, feeling the heat inside her wane a bit as her mind turned the name in her head. She prepared herself to feeling a bit stupid if the answer was no, she asked. “And can you speak to snakes, Salazar?”

Sal, Salazar, frowned in confusion at Hermione’s change in tone. “Yes… How did you guess?”

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Calm, she needed to stay calm. Firstly, he didn’t even know she was muggleborn, secondly, it was very possible that all the discourse had been added on after Sal’s death, he wouldn’t be the first man blackened by history.

But she had to answer, Sal, Salazar, was starting to look on her worriedly. She swallowed. “Salazar Slytherin?”

It was his turn to link at her stupidly. “How do you… Do I… What…”

She took in a deep breath. “Wizarding history remembers you, Salazar.”

“In a bad way?” He asked with a strange light in his grey eyes.

She hesitated a bit, going over all the info she had ever had about it, and putting it in the context of _Sal_ the man who held her so tenderly despite not knowing her, and not knowing her blood status. She sorted the informations in her head in order of trustworthiness, and found that there was very little she knew for sure.

She shook her head, then made a so-so gesture with her hand. “You are remembered for your cunning and ambition,” she finally answered, hoping it would be enough.

“Those are good traits,” Sal said, eyes narrowed at her. “But slippery. Ambition means little if it isn’t tempered by kindness, and cunning means little without wisdom.”

She smiled slowly, here it was, the proof she needed. A thousand years was a lot of time to twist the words and actions of a man. Beside, the first thing she had ever learned about Salazar Slytherin was that he founded a school, that wasn’t the action of a cruel man.

She cleared her throat. “Well, then, Well met Salazar Slytherin, I am Hermione Granger.”

“Hermione Granger.” He repeated, accepting her olive branch.

“Well, now, the ritual isn’t going to do itself.” She added forcefully, trying to break the strange tension.

He snorted, accepting the distraction, and reached again for her hand. Hermione looked on with a smile as he placed a kiss on the back of her hand.

She let him pull her closer and lay her down on the bedcover. The next kiss he gave her melted any lingering doubt, and she found herself chanting his name as his lips travelled to her breasts.

Not very long after, Hermione came from Salazar’s mouth down on her other set of lips, yelling his full name in a way that made his look very smug.

Then she came again a few minutes later with Sal over her, moaning at every one of his thrusts.

She laid on her back, not thinking about anything for once, barely even noticing when Sal stood and left the circle.

She did notice him coming back, though, and laboriously sat up when she heard the familiar thump of a pile of books being set down. She would need to be fucked much harder not to perk up to interest at the sound or sight of a gloriously thick book.

“You said there weren’t any books on sex magic left in your time.” Sal offered as an explanation, and Hermione felt her heart warm.

“Marry me.” she blurted

“Over a couple of books?” he asked good naturedly, thankfully understanding the half joking nature of her words.

“You’re the first man to ever bring me books just because I said I’d like to read it.” She declared, which… maybe wasn’t telling great things about her relationship with Ron, or maybe said a lot more about Salazar. But then again, the man was a teacher, offering up books could very well come with the territory

Sal smirked at her. “I will keep it under advisement,” he told her seriously, then opened a book while making room for Hermione to curl up at his side.

She crawled over to him and left his reading voice guide her along the archaic letters to find the treasures of wisdom in the book.

When the candles burned out and Sal and his books dissolved too, Hermione felt strangely bereft. She would have loved a few more hours propped on Sal’s solid chest, reading fascinating books. She would have loved for the day to never end.

She smiled and shook her head at herself. Look at her go, falling in love with no less than one of the Founders.

She repeated to herself that it was just a few random meetings in the life of a long dead man, and she couldn’t let it mean more, she was still looking forward to the next time she’d see him.

Oh she was in trouble.


	6. Chapter 6

Sal’s beard kept visibly growing in between rituals.

Hermione easily got used to it, and even grew to like the slight rasp of it against the delicate skin of her face or the inside of her thighs, but what she liked less was the speed at which it grew, it made it obvious that he was aging more quickly than her. She was worried that one of these days Salazar may come to see her as a child and stop wanting her.

It wasn’t the case yet, she thought fiercely, tangling her hands in his long hair and kissed him passionately, with all the fire he liked from her.

“Sal?”

“Hmm?”

She blushed at what she was gearing up to say, the heat in her cheeks caught Sal’s attention, and he raised a questioning eyebrow at her. “I was wondering if you’d let me… Experiment?” Sal’s brow jumped up a bit, and his chin tilted a bit to the side, in a sign to go on. “You know, like,” she struggled to find the right words in old English when all she’d learned was rather academic language, “I’d like to learn how to… pleasure you, with my hands and mouth.”

She trailed off embarrassedly, sure her cheeks were hot enough to cook an egg on. Thankfully, Salazar answered before she could start to babble. “Your hands and mouth already pleasure me, dear Hermione.” He said softly. She glared at him, but his gaze was light and amused, a small smile on the corner of his mouth that had her melting. “Yes, of course, it would be my honor and pleasure for you to learn with me, haven’t I already said so?”

Hermione closed her eyes hard and lowered her head in her hands.

Sal gently tugged her so she ended up sitting in his lap. “I’m sorry, dear Hermione, I did not mean to embarrass you. I love the light in your eyes when you learn something new, and I will truly be honored to see it applied to my pleasure.”

Hermione waited until she didn’t feel like her whole face was on fire before tentatively looking up at him. “You really mean that, it’s not just flattery.”

Sal shot her a charming grin. “I do not flatter, I say the truth, it is a testament to you that all I have to say of you is positive.”

Hermione felt her cheeks warm once more, but in a much more manageable fashion. Sal waited until she was a bit more composed and looking at him in the face, then kissed her, deeply and slowly, until they had to come up for air.

Sal moved his legs to give Hermione a better access to his erection, making the move so easily a to make it appear natural, one leg splayed flat and to the side, the other bent at the knee. Hermione took a deep breath, even as she moved herself between his thighs. Salazar smiled at her and took her hands, he planted a kiss on each palm, then lowered her hand and placed them around his dick.

“When you’re starting and there is no moisture, it’s best to keep your grip lax as you move, so you won’t hurt me.” he slipped his own hands away from Hermione’s, sliding them up her forearm. “Go on, explore, I’ll tell you more as we go.”

Hermione took another deep breath and gently slid her hands up, then down again, sure she couldn’t go wrong with that.

“Hmm right, you can be a little more firm if you want, yes, perfect.”

Hermione tried to keep her attention on what she was doing, sneaking quick glances at Sal’s face here and there to asses Sal’s expression, but the glances lessened as he murmured a running commentary of her actions in her ear. It might actually be the most intimate she’d ever been with him. Her hands on his warm, soft-skinned erection, and his calm, breathy voice next to her ear.

“Oh hn, good, do that again? Yes. If you stop moving, then you can squeeze, not too hard, I’ll tell you when to stop, hm, now. Ha, hn, and let go, it’s okay, I’m fine, you can go again…”

It should have felt weird, she thought, but to her it felt like she was getting the most hands on, intimate, personalised lesson ever, and she could hear in Sal’s voice how he liked things. His warm voice and obvious enjoyment was keeping her own desire burning, already she could feel her inner thighs slicking, and she was hit with a fairly devious idea.

Hermione let go of one hand, and dipped it between her legs, earning an interested look from Sal. She quickly swiped some of her slick onto her palm, then brought the hand back to Sal’s dick, earning a soft exclamation, and a chuckle.

“Clever. Yes, there, hhm you can go faster now without hurting me, it will glide better, yes, yes, you can also be firmer if you want, it’s ah…”

She listened to him as he mostly sang her praises for a while, before her next want hit.

Slowly, licking her lips in anticipation, she scooted back a bit, then bowed her back so her face came closer to Salazar’s member. She barely had to wait to receive Sal’s most explicit and enthusiastic consent to her plan.

She started out with just licking tentatively at the head of his cock, He tasted mostly of salt. Sal whined. “Yes, ah just, mind your teeth and you’ll do great, Hermione…”

The books she’d read on the subject also warned on the danger of teeth in blowjobs, and she took a moment to assess her ability to keep hers sheathed, then she bore down and took the head of his cock in her mouth, wriggling her tongue a bit underneath.

Sal surprised her by bucking up, and she drew away coughing. Sal immediately apologized, but she waved him off, he hadn’t actually hurt her, just surprised her a bit, though she was thankful that she’d had her hands still wrapped around him that had kept him from ramming his dick up her throat.

She tried again, slowly, and she could feel Sal’s muscles thrumming to keep himself from parasitic movement. She tried sucking, this time, which worked better than she hoped, since Sal actually came without a warning.

She drew back with a cough once more, letting Sal finish up jetting sperm on his own abdomen she was feeling gratified, and happy with her achievement so far.

She stuck her tongue out thoughtfully, trying to determine what sperm actually tasted like. She found no easy comparison, it was salty, and a little bitter. She didn’t care for it over-much, but it wasn’t unpleasant either.

“Well,” she said when Sal looked like he was back. “Practice makes perfect, can I count on your cooperation to practice again?” It was funny how easily the words slid out of her mouth compared to her earlier awkwardice.

“Of course.” Sal smiled, then he pushed Hermione onto her back and proceeded to return the favor.

Hermione didn’t last very long. She came with Salazar’s name on her lips, then shuddered as the ritual’s magic flew through her.

She pulled Sal on top of her and happily cuddled a bit before Sal got up to get his now customary book.

“I saw this one, and thought of you.” He declared as he came back in the circle, making Hermione’s heart beat faster than his usual compliments on her beauty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a bit short, sorry I just wanted to post something before going to sleep.  
> Next chapter is going to be porn-free, expect some plot to barge in.
> 
> Also, I finished outlining this story, yay!


	7. Chapter 7

Once Hermione had finished warding Grimmauld place back up, she took a bit of a break from the rituals, she figured that Sal seemed to do them once or twice a year.

She wasn’t done studying sex magic, but she was unsure it would be a good idea to publish on the matter, despite how much good it could do, Sal’s presence was proof that things could also go spectacularly sideways. Even if she considered Sal to be a fortunate accident, she could probably tear the fabric of time if she wasn’t careful with what she told him.

In the meantime, she had some redecorating to do.

It was six month later, in a much improved 12 Grimmauld Place, that she found her next excuse to conduct a ritual, this one focusing on strengthening the magical sentience of the house, so it would require less work for poor, aging Kreacher to keep the place running.

Her preparation followed her well worn routine, and she didn’t think much, at first, to see Salazar appear in front of her. His beard was noticeably longer, but she didn’t think much on it, except for her familiar fear about becoming a child in his eyes.

Next, she noticed his reddened eyes, and the flinch he had when she instinctively reached to him.

“Sal, what happened. What…” she studied the runes on the floor, hoping for a clue. “A house destructive ritual? What happened, I don’t recognize this place.”

Salazar gave a great shuddering breath. “I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have done this, to you or to her, but… You’re the first one I thought of.”

Now she was really worried. A tear tracked down Sal’s cheek before losing itself in his beard. “Sal, what happened?”

“I got married.”

Hermione took a deep breath by the nose feeling instantly and intensely jealous. “Then you are right.” She said, turning her heel and going to her bed to retrieve her robe and putting it over her nudity. “You shouldn’t have come to me, have you no respect for her? Or for me? I won’t help you cheat on your wife.”

Hermione was getting a good head of steam. She half wanted to snuff one of the candles, but her other half wanted to thoroughly lecture Sal for his tactlessness. She was, however cut short by Sal’s whisper. “She’s dead.”

“What?”

“She’s dead.” Sal was crying, for real this time, with hiccups and snot and everything ugly about grief. “I. I left her at home for a while, I’d been corresponding with some people about building a school for magic, and I left to meet them…”

Sal stopped, obviously grieved. Hermione cautiously came closer to him and draped herself over his shoulders in what she hoped to be a comforting embrace.

“I found her… I came back and she wasn’t home. I searched for her, but everyone was looking at me strange… When I finally asked someone where she was, they told me in the main square… And she was there. Or at least her bones were there, in the middle of a circle of soot.”

Hermione gasped, and forgot all about jealousy. She couldn’t grasp the enormity of what Sal was saying. She knew, logically, about witch burnings, but it had been history, dry and old,that Sal had to find a loved one in the middle of a pyre, it was almost too much to wrap her head around.

Except it wasn’t because she had witnessed death before too, all the heroes of Hogwarts, dead on the lawns, still sometimes haunted her sleep more than two years later.

She hugged Sal more tightly. He kept talking, like it would do anything to help, like, maybe, telling her was helping ease the horror. “She was so simple and sweet, and she wanted childrens, we wanted them, we tried for them time and again, we’d almost given up, but…” Hermione squeezed him tighter. “There were bones. Tiny. Tiny little bones in her belly. She finally got pregnant, and these monsters burned her. They burned her and then they had the gall to tell me I should be thankful that they killed her. Said she was a witch and she’d bewitched me.”

Hermione cried along with him, clutching him tight to her chest, and shushing him soothingly. What more could she do?

She could do more. “Sal, are you still in this village? Is that why you want to destroy a house?”

Sal nodded. “Took all my will not to massacre every single one of them. They all deserve to die for what they did. You were all I could think of. Poor Selwyn. She’s dead, now, and all I could think was the arms of my old lover.”

Hermione swallowed. “I’m sure she’ll forgive you. Listen to me, Sal. Salazar Slytherin, I need you to look at me.”

Sal slowly turned and indeed looked at her. “Sal, I need you to listen. I need you to obey me, can you do that?”

Sal hiccuped, then nodded.

“Tomorrow morning, at the first light, you need to go, don’t bother with the house, only pack what’s indispensable. Flee, Sal, you hear me? I need you to flee before they decide to do the same to you.”

Sal frowned. “But.”

“No buts, she wouldn’t want you to die too. They are afraid and crazed, you can’t confront them, they’ll overwhelm you. Go. Go back to Godric, or Helga or Rowena, do you hear me? Go back to your friends, don’t look back.”

She spent all the time it took for the candles to burn out hugging Sal tightly, rocking him lightly as he cried and disjointedly spoke of his dead wife and all she had been. Toward the end of their time, Sal even managed an apology to Hermione, for stopping seeing her without a previous warning, but he hadn’t thought it respectful to her or his wife to have a sex ritual that involved Hermione just to tell her that he’d fallen in love with another woman.

Once the candles went out and she found herself alone in her circle, Hermione stood back up, and sought Harry and Ron out.

She must have looked a fright, eyes reddened, tear tracks all over her face, and wearing only a bathrobe. Ron and Harry immediately got up when they saw her, and pulled her in a group hug.

She was no longer in charge, so she let herself deflate and accepted her best friends’ attention.

She let Harry push her in the sofa and Ron ply her with tea.

They both looked at her awkwardly for a time, then Ron elbowed Harry. Harry looked put out, but he came closer to Hermione anyway. “Hermione, I know you might not want to talk about it but… Did he hurt you?

She blinked at him stupidly for a moment, then she remembered that she’d told them she was going to do a ritual, they probably had come to the worst kind of conclusion.

“No!” She shook her head vigorously. “No, he’d never hurt me, in any way.”

“Really?” Ron asked. “Because you seem pretty hurt to me.”

“No. Well, yes, but no… It’s just. Something horrible happened to him… I don’t know if I can tell you though, it’s Sal’s story to tell.”

“But Sal isn’t here Hermione.” Harry gently said.

“If you’re right about him being from the past he’s long dead, Hermione.” Ron added bluntly as ever.

Hermione’s tears came again. Yes, Sal was from a very long time ago, she never should have hopped to have something solid with him. Sal knew it too, visibly, since he decided to get married with another woman. A woman she barely even knew anything about except for Sal’s disjointed reminiscing.

Salazar Slytherin was never going to be hers and she shouldn’t have had to hear him sing the praises of a dead woman to grasp that.

Her silly crush had been doomed from the start. No matter that he was the first man to bring her books just because he knew she enjoyed them. No matter how gentle and encouraging he had been during sex, the two of them were not meant to last.

But she could still be there for him. She was used to being here for others, especially friends of hers. It didn’t matter that she’d hoped her and Salazar would be more than just friends, she was going to be there for him in his time of crisis, and she was going to bury her jealousy in the depth of her mind, and just, be there.

It helped to know that whatever happened from there on with Sal, she had her two best friends to support her on this side of time, just as Sal had the other founders.


	8. Chapter 8

Hermione did her next ritual (the same one, actually, since it hadn’t been successfully consomated) the very next day.

She found Sal looking a bit less mournful, but not that much older. A quick look at his circle showed that he was in the very first steps of an elaborate warding. Another look around revealed the familiar grey stones of Hogwarts.

A tension that she didn’t know she was carrying lifted from her shoulders. Sal was safe at Hogwarts, nothing horrible had happened to him since the last time she saw him.

The sex this time was slow and tentative, much more so than their first time. Sal was still mourning his wife, she could understand it. He seemed content enough to give Hermione pleasure, and even smiled at her when she came down from her orgasm, but he shook his head when she made to straddle him.

He didn’t want to let someone other than his wife touch him still. Hermione could sympathise, but he was using a sex ritual, he needed to come for his circle to be completed.

When she pointed it out he dropped his head on her shoulder. “I know. I knew when I traced the circle… I thought I could do it, but now you are here, beautiful as ever, and I feel like I’m betraying her memory by coming back to you.”

She was thankful that he didn’t see her face, because she doubted her expression at the moment was anything like pretty. Jealousy was not a pretty emotion, after all. “Did she know about me?”

“Not as such… I told her that I’d been with other women, and I told her how sex magic worked, but I didn’t mention you by name.”

Hermione told herself that she was not petty, she wasn’t. She refused to be.

They reached a compromise. Hermione stayed kneeling in front of him, his forehead on her shoulder, her arms around is shoulder and hands on the back of his neck, and she let him stroke himself to completion on his own. She pretended she didn’t feel his tears tracking down from her shoulder.

Once the wave of magic travelled through them, Hermione scouted herself to the side so she could hug Sal while he took control of himself again. Then they climbed to their feet and each went to their bed to dress up a little.

Sal showed her another book he’d brought for her with a small, sad smile. She almost choked up at the sight, but she didn’t think her own smile was much better.

Just as they used to do a few months ago for Hermione, and a few years ago to Salazar, they sat on the floor in the middle of their circles, Hermione cuddled up in Salazar’s chest, listening to him reading the ancient letters to help her grasp the content of the book.

Hermione decided that she wouldn’t be getting any better on the front of the stupid crush if she saw Sal too often, so she made herself a rule to only start a ritual if she had a good reason to on her own side, and not to do them more than once a month.

She was not sure she was succeeding in keeping her heart on it’s leash, or even at keeping herself from doing rituals, but she tried.

As time passed for the both of them, she saw Sal gradually coming back to something resembling his old self. He was still somehow sadder, but she understood it. She was sure if he’d seen her before the war, he’d also call her “somehow sadder”, witnessing death did that to a person.

Her first reaction upon the circle taking her to a new destination was surprise, but it was good surprise. Sal had finally left Hogwarts for a moment. She studied the circles as had become her habit upon being summoned to the same place as Salazar.

“Healing.” She called, as her eyes came back to rest on Sal.

He grimaced something like a smile at her. “Yes, my mother.” She made a pained grimace and he sighed. “The Plagues are dangerous to the elderly, but I hope she will survive this one with a little magic help.”

Hermione nodded, and stepped into his waiting arms. They had managed to get a good routine for these rituals as Sal healed from his grief. She followed her part, tilting her head back so he could kiss her, but waiting for him to decide to kiss her. This time the first kiss came rather fast and painlessly, she smiled.

Since he seemed to feel decisive, she let him take the lead, and concentrated on the pleasure rather than her pitiful emotions. She refused to ask herself if Sal’s getting better might mean he’d soon take a new wife.

Feeling Salazar acting more like himself helped her discard unneeded thoughts, and soon enough, she was coming around him, calling his name as she went. She delighted in seeing his face when her wild contractions had him coming too.

Things weren’t bad.

She smiled to herself and admired Sal’s backside when he turned about and left the circle to fetch the day’s book. Sal was still her perfect lover.

Maybe she should just stop doing these rituals altogether, it might help her save her heart.

But she was too involved in being Sal’s support to really consider it.


	9. Chapter 9

Hermione checked her circle over. Everything was in order. If Ron and Harry had been a bit nosy, they would have asked whether it was really necessary to old this ritual just to un-curse the old Black family ring. She most certainly would not have answered that no, it wasn’t vital, and she was mostly doing it for the excuse to have sex with Sal. And she would absolutely not add that Sal was short for Salazar Slytherin, this was her secret.

She didn’t disrobe before entering the circle. She could very well start touching herself with clothes on, and she didn’t fancy another accidental run-in with Salazar’s castle-mates while she was totally naked. The one incident where he’d forgotten to silence the door to his rooms and had Godric Gryfindor run in thinking Sal was in danger was enough embarrassment to last her her whole life.

Thankfully, Sal’s first reaction upon seeing how horrified she was had been to extinguish one of the candles, making the whole debacle his problem and not hers. Apparently, the Founders now had one more inside joke about Sal’s ghostly future lover. Sal had gotten over the incident better than her. He still entered the ritual space naked, which she was very okay with.

When the ritual spaces merged, and for the first time since they first met, Hermione found herself more taken in by Sal’s surroundings than by Sal himself. Salazar was… out in the woods somewhere. there was a small tent a few meters away, they were surrounded by a natural blend of trees. The soil and litter had been removed from a large circles, probably by magic, and the ritual circles were etched upon the man-made clearing.

Hermione shivered a bit as a cold wind blew her hair back. She was glad not to be naked, what had possessed Sal to call here there?

Her eyes passed over her lover with a little smile, but the frown came back swiftly as she studied the ritual circles.

She didn’t have a clue what it was for, and the part of her brain well accustomed to arithmancy was yelling that Sal’s circle was wrong. It shouldn’t work, the runes were imprecise at best, the lines didn’t curve as they should, some ingredient had been put in the wrong place… It was a mess, and she wasn’t expecting anything less than perfect circles from Sal. He hadn’t made a mistake in his circles once since she knew him

“Sal?” She breathed gently, finally settling her focus on him. “Are you alright?”

To her schock, Sal’s answer was an unhinged cackle. Not the nice kind either, more the half-mad sort.

“Sal?” She wrapped herself more firmly in her robe and crouched in front of him. “Sal? What’s wrong?”

Sal’s laugh caught in his throat and turned to sobs. He reached his arms forth and pulled Hermione closer. “Hermione. Hermione. You’re here, always here. Hermione.”

Now she was getting really worried. “Sal, what happened?”

“It’s their fault! All their fault!” Sal’s unhinged muttering worried her, but not as much as the stink she could now smell coming from him. He reeked of alcohol, which explained the behavior and sloppy circle casting, but not what had actually happened. “Their fault, I should kill them, kill them all, murderers. Murderers! Monsters, they’re the monsters t’s their fault.”

She had a very bad feeling all of a sudden. “Whose fault, Salazar?”

Sal sniffed. “Non-magical ones, all of them, should just… kill them, kill them all.”

SLAP

Hermione’s hand had moved before she even registered it. Sal blinked at her, surprised, one hand raising to his reddened cheek.

“How dare you!” She gritted out. Her eyes went to the botched circle again, now that he’d rambled about killing, she could parse out it’s intended goal, it was a wide range Aveda, with a sloppy limitation spell that might protect people who had magic. “How dare you involve ME in this? Killing all the ones without magic! It makes YOU a mass-MURDERER”

“I had faith in you, Salazar! I believed all of this was wrong, I believed in your goodness and now this! Not only you want to go on a genocide, but to use me for it too? And then to pretend like magical people are better than non-magical, do you really think they are the only ones with monsters amongst them? Just as you’re about to bloody your own hands as much as they ever did?”

She abruptly bared her left forearm and clenched her arm muscles to make the scarred word written on it show. “Do you know who did this to me?” She screeched. “It was a witch, she believed having non-magical parent made me an inferior being compared to her and her precious Dark Lord. And you are right now paving their road.”

“You are really becoming everything I’ve had to fight against since I was eleven, Sal, and I expect much better from you.”

Hermione could feel more words build up in the back of her throat, things that were made to hurt, things she would gladly have told Salazar Slytherin before she learned to know him. She clamped down on them because he was drunk and visibly grieving and she still wanted to trust him so much. He was still her Sal. The one who caressed her face gently and coaxed her through her first time, the one who brought her books, the one who cried the death of his wife in her arms.

So she didn’t say that she’s disgusted he ever put his hands of her, it would hurt him, and it wouldn’t be true. She didn’t say the world would be better off without wizard like him, because this wasn’t him, not truly. The true Salazar was the one she knew, or so she dearly hoped.

Instead she says. “Go, get some sleep, or something. Get sober, get your head on straight, I am not talking with you now.”

With a wide gesture, she knocked down one of his candles. The ritual space dissolved and she found herself alone in her room.


	10. Chapter 10

It took Hermione a few days to cool back down and consider her harsh words to Sal again. Se didn’t really regret them, but some of them might have been unwarranted. Some of them weren’t really meant towards Sal, or even to Salazar. Her worse words had been aimed at Slytherin, the ghost of a man she didn’t even know but who had ruled a good chunk of her days in Hogwarts.

She had never meant to hold the modern prejudice toward Slytherin House against Sal. She had long since mused on the subject of self-fulfilling prophecies, and how the prejudice against all Slytherin children might be the reason they grew bitter and angry.

And in a moment of (justified) ire, she’d gone and flung all of her old anger right in Sal’s face when he was at his most vulnerable, and that was not on.

She hesitated and procrastinated for a while, but she was a Gryffindor for a reason. She was going to take her courage, trace her circles, and apologize to Sal for getting overly upset at him while he was clearly sloshed. Then… She’d probably yell at him some more for trying arcane magic while sloshed, and for ever making a ritual meant to kill people, but she’d do so within reason, and after asking why he’d drank too much in the first place.

But she was going to apologize. Right after she looked up the old English for sloshed.

In the end it took her a month to actually get around to doing the ritual again. She really hated to apologize, Harry and Ron could confirm.

It took her a while longer than she was used to before the circles started to blur. Hermione knew it was because she didn’t have sex at the forefront of her mind.

She closed her eyes and swallowed, then opened them again to look at Salazar. She was taken aback by the smell. With one month going on in-between, she couldn’t ascertain that the stench was worse than last time, but she definitely smelled alcohol. Sal was sat on the floor, naked, and was glaring at her.

Hermione frowned back. She glanced about and found the circle to be the exact same disaster in waiting that she’d found the last time. Come to think of it, the woods around Sal seemed familiar. Had Sal seriously just put the candle back and summoned her again right away? Really? And to think she’d spent almost a month agonizing about apologizing to him.

Rather than start with her apology right away, as she had planned, she planted her fists on her hips and gave Sal her almost patented ‘I hope you have a good excuse for this’ look. It was one she’d had plenty of experience with thanks to Harry and Ron and all their excuses to try and worm out of doing their homework. It didn’t work on Sal as well as it had on the boys, and she was abruptly reminded that the age gap between them had been steadily growing. She was Twenty two, and he was… Pushing his thirties, probably, maybe more.

She took an hurried step back as Sal lumbered up to his feet, but the part of her that had refused to break even under Bellatrix’s torture made her lift her chin and pinch her lips and look at him steadily in the eyes.

Sal stumbled a bit, but managed to stay upright. He thrust an angry finger forth pointing waveringly at Hermione’s face. “You, you betrayed me. Now! You should be on my side and you dare! Dare take the side of these savages? How could you not be on MY side?”

“You don’t have a ‘side’! Only stupid delusions. “She said as blankly as she could. “You open your mouth and I hear the ramblings of a drunk. A murderous, power hungry drunkard.”

“I am not drunk!” Sal yelled, Hermione restrained her snort. “They deserve to die! all they know to do is torture and kill their betters. I will kill them all and it will stop, no more burnings, no more stonings, no more drownings. There will be peace.”

“No there won’t. I know what magical ones do when they turn bad, I know about the cruciatus about the dark curses about the torture and manipulation and humiliation and belittling of anything ‘lesser’ than wizards. We are no better because we have magic, we are just humans too, except with much more power at our fingertips.

“You are wrong! and you should be on my side, you always were. You can’t… You can’t just.”

“Oh I assure you that I can very much just!” Hermione yelled back. “What do you think? That you own me or something? That somehow my having sex with you means you get to make my decisions for me. I’m not yours, and I’m not on your side, if you even had a real side that was more than mad drunken raving!”

Sal took a step toward her, and she stepped back instinctively. She didn’t know if Salazar was a violent drunk, and she didn’t really want to find out.

Her step knocked over one of the candles and Sal and his surroundings blurred out. The last image she brought back with her was Sal’s enraged expression.

She sighed and violently ran a hand through her hair. What was the matter with Sal?

No, never mind. She didn’t want to know.

She smelled smoke. A whirl around showed her the knocked out candle trying to light up the hardwood flooring. She yelped and dove for her wand.

Stupid stupid stupid. A spell extinguished the nascent fire, and all her other candles too. She carefully lifted the knocked over candle up and frowned at the blackened spot on the wood.

Harry wouldn’t mind, but she minded. She hastily changed into something a bit more covering and decisively strode to the library. There had to be a spell to restore small burns.

Researching for a simple household charm was not enough to banish Sal from her mind, but Hermione was nothing if not decisive. If she wanted to be busy enough to forget about Sal, then she would be.


	11. Chapter 11

“Hermione, do you have a moment?” Harry asked nicely, almost too nicely in fact.

She frowned up at him, noticing Ron lurking a little behind him. Huh. “Yes, of course, what is it?”

“Hermione, are you alright? You’ve been acting weird for a couple of months now… You know we’re always there for you right?” Harry cautiously asked.

“Yeah,” Ron added, “just because we’re aurors now doesn’t mean we don’t have time for our best friend.”

Harry nodded and stepped closer. “It’s just, if something is bugging you, we can always help you, you know.”

Hermione almost smiled and told them there was nothing, but their earnest expressions stopped her. What harm would there be in confiding the problem that was eating at her.

“It’s Sal…”

Hermione explained her two last rituals to the boys. They were very awkward until she understood their problem and laughingly added on that she didn’t have sex with Sal in said rituals. Their relieved expression was enough to make her laugh.

“What an ass!” Ron bursted out as soon as she’d explained about the drunken ravings.

Hermione couldn’t help but scrunch her nose at him. “It’s not so simple…”

She explained about Sal’s wife and how she’d been burned.

“I thought real witch could avoid being burned thanks to the flame-freezing charm?” Harry interrupted her.

Hermione shrugged “I don’t know, maybe it didn’t exist yet?” She answered before it came to her that she’d still forgotten to tell them something. “And, uh, Sal is a nickname, actually, his name is Salazar.”

“You mean like Salazar Slytherin? Talk about a shit name.” Ron laughed.

“...”

“...”

“No!”

“You’ve slept with Salazar Slytherin?”

“How long have you known this?”

“... Do you really want to hear details about my sex life with Salazar?” She evaded. Ron and Harry paled and shook their heads. “I learned who he was after our last talk about him, but I decided the rumors had to be wrong, Sal wasn’t anything like that. Or at least he wasn’t until the last couple of rituals.”

Ron opened his mouth, then closed it, opened again, closed. Hermione raised her eyebrows at him. “You… don’t plan to sleep with him again, right?”

Hermione pursed her lips, not noticing Ron’s wince. She sighed. “No. No, I’m not planning to.”

A year passed. Ron and Harry were a little awkward at first, but they took to not mentioning Sal, and the awkwardness passed.

Just because she’d given up on publishing about sex magic didn’t mean she’d given up on publishing altogether.

Soon enough, Hermione found herself sucked in her next project, a biography of Remus Lupin’s life that doubled as a plea to repel anti-werewolf laws.

Another year passed and she was working on a biography of Dobby. She would have appreciated not to think about Sal each time she saw someone from Slytherin, especially since investigating Dobby meant spending a good amount of time with Malfoys, but she made do.

She found her notes on sex magic again, and made sure to bury them right back under piles of researches. She would have destroyed them, if it was not the product of so much hard work, and on a subject that was so helpful.

She decided to actually go out in muggle London with the intent of getting laid. thinking that maybe other good experiences in bed would help edge Sal out of her mind.

It didn’t work.

Well she did get laid, but she couldn't help comparing the muggle she had sex with to Sal, and frankly, she was not sure anyone could compare to Sal.

She suspected something was up when Harry and Ron came in the library together looking a bit too serious. “Oh, Good morning to you two, do you need something?”

Ron shook his head. “We don’t ‘Mione, but we thought maybe you needed us.”

“It’s been more than two years now, Hermione, and we can see you’re still hung up on your Sal… You know what I’m talking about.” Hermione opened her mouth to tell him that no she didn’t see actually, but Harry headed her off. “We can see it you know, we’re not blind. You used to smile, you’d get excited about seeing him, you came back from your rituals more relaxed, and now you’re like, the research monster all the time, you don’t slow down, or when you do you look sad and angry and. We think you need some closure.”

Hermione huffed and puffed, because she wasn’t going to curse or hex her best friends, even if they were being extra annoying today, and sometimes deep breaths helped her hold onto her temper better.

Then she spoke. “What closure, I already did a second ritual to verify and turns out he was still trying to kill every muggle around him.”

Harry nodded. “Well, maybe you need another kind of closure?”

“For him to magically not be an ass anymore and to go back to his old, charming behavior and to love me back and want to marry with me and all that rot? Did you forget he’s in a completely different time period and we can never be together, as evidenced by the fact that he already got married to another woman once? We can never be together that’s it.”

“Well I never thought I’d see the day when our ‘Mione would label something impossible without doing a ton of research on the subject beforehand.” Ron mused at a volume he might think was quiet. No actually at the exact level at which he could later pretend he did not mean to be heard.

“You want to see my research?” She got up from her chair and charged out of the library. “I’ll show you my research!”

She felt a bit stupid barging in her room and excavating all her notes on sex rituals from the bottom of her piles of documents, but Ron had provoked her.

She tromped back down to the library with a sizeable pile of parchment and different manners of muggle notebooks, and laid it all on the table, over her current research. “Here are my researches! You don’t get to accuse me of not researching enough.

Ron shrugged, Harry pulled himself a chair and sat at the table, then reached for the top of Hermione’s note on sex magic.

“What?” She spluttered as Harry pulled a notebook to him, and Ron begrudgingly sat too.

“Well, we’re going to help you review your research” Harry said, with a tone of voice that implied a ‘of course’.

Ron visibly swallowed and helped himself to another notebook. “I’d say I hope you didn’t get too graphic, but knowing you, it’s probably horribly detailed.”

Hermione started, then she broke in helpless giggles. “Oh, no.” Giggles, “no it’s not ‘horribly detailed’” She wrestled with her control a bit, but then took a deep breath and sat at her chair. She took on her teaching voice instead. “The nature of Sex Rituals is to accumulate magic during sex acts and to realise it all after all the parties have had one orgasm. I did not feel the need to detail it much more than the name of the sex acts in question, my memory is really good enough to recall more in depth details.”

Ron nodded, hen fell silent for a minute, then he turned red. “So, I gather that I don’t really want to know what BJ means, then.”

Hermione simply refused to blush, it was Ron and Harry’s own fault that they were even going through her notes, she refused to be self-conscious at this point. “No, you don’t.”


	12. Chapter 12

With Ron and Harry’s help, they managed to go through and summarize all the things Sal had told Hermione about himself. None of it pointed to mass murderer.

“I just wish I could research about him reliably, all we have are rumors and age old tales.” Hermione mumbled around the end of a quill.

Ron developed a strange expression and stared at Harry. Harry blinked at him. “What?”

“There is a reliable source! Two actually.” Hermione frowned at Ron in bewilderment until he elaborated. “The ghosts! The Grey Lady and the Bloody Baron were probably children, but they are still more reliable than most accounts.”

Of course. “Ron, you’re a genius!” Hermione exclaimed, planting a kiss on his cheek. “I’m going to owl professor McGonagall.” she stopped on the threshold of the library and turned back to her friends. “You two are brilliant at this, that’s what makes you good aurors, and my best friends.”

Ron blushed a bit, Harry grinned at her and waved her goodbye.

Headmistress McGonagall easily allowed Hermione the right to come to Hogwarts and speak with the ghosts, with only a question on whether she was planning a new book. Hermione answered with something noncommittal and thanked the Headmistress again.

It took her a bit less than an hour to track down the ghost of Helena Ravenclaw, as she was not in Ravenclaw tower when Hermione checked. The opportunity to explore Hogwarts corridors once again gave Hermione a smile. Maybe she should consider becoming a teacher someday, Merlin knew how Professor Binns needed to be replaced by someone a bit less soporific, and Hermione loved to learn about the past, and to share her discoveries with people.

She interrupted her train of thoughts as she finally saw the tall grey silhouette gliding down a hall. She hurried to the ghost’s side and cleared her throat.

Helena turned to Hermione, her expression haughty, but seemingly interested anyway.

Hermione tried on a smile. “Hello, Miss Ravenclaw, I wanted to ask you a question about the founders…” As Helena didn’t seem to want to talk yet, Hermione went on. “In fact, it’s about Salazar.”

Helena stopped gliding and turned fully toward Hermione. “If your question is about Salazar, why are you talking to me and not Slytherin’s Ghost?” She asked, eyebrows raised.

Hermione bit at her lip, then she honestly answered. “I might ask him too if you have no answer, but as the child of one of Salazar’s best friends, I think you know more than he does.”

“You are the first to think this in a very long time.”

Hermione took a deep breath and answered. “Well, I am cheating a bit.” She glanced about to ensure they were alone, then she asked. “Were you aware of Sal’s ghostly future lover?”

Helena’s brow lifted at the question. “I heard Godric tease Salazar about one such lover, yes. Why do you know this?”

“Maybe we could discuss this in a place a bit less public than the halls?” Hermione tried.

Once Helena had guided Hermione to an empty classroom and Hermione had set wards so they couldn’t be interrupted or eavesdropped on, she started her tale. “It all started when I found a very old book on Sex Magic, and decided to investigate it.” Hermione felt herself blush at the subject, but she drove on. “I wanted to write a book and publish it, but I needed to test it…”

Helena was starting to look amused, but she stayed silent.

“Anyway, I tried one of the rituals, alone, and then I met Sal. Magic apparently matched us because we had similar magic and were performing similar ritual. I don’t really know why we later kept being matched, except maybe because we both wanted to keep meeting each-other…”

Hermione did her best to explain about her encounters with Sal in the most modest way she could find. She shared what she’d learnt about him as time passed, and finished her tale with the two last rituals she’d had, where Sal was drunk and mad with rage against muggles.

“... So I hopped you might be able to tell me more about what happened to him, to drive him this mad. I really don’t want to think him the muggle-hater that nowadays rumors paint him to be, but I’m also not so sure if I should forgive him.”

Helena serenely nodded. “I do not know yet whether to believe you or not, but this was an interesting story nonetheless, I don’t mind telling you the story of the last time I saw Salazar in exchange.”

the last time. Hermione gulped. the famed fight between Slytherin and the other Founders. She was suspecting this might be it, from the fact that she’d been summoned in the woods and not at Hogwarts.

“I don’t know exactly what happened, Salazar told us he was going to visit his mother, as he did from times to times, except this time he apparated back at the castle during the supper, crying and yelling about how he should just ‘kill them all’. That’s what I remember, ‘kill them all’ and ‘these mud dwelling non-magicals’. We didn’t manage to get anything coherent out of him, and he was scaring the younger students, especially those whose parents were non magical. Helga asked him to calm down, and my mother too. Since it didn’t work, Godric yelled at him to be quiet, or he’d throw him in the Black Lake. After that, the three of them marched Salazar out of the Great Hall, and that’s the last that I know on the subject.”

Hermione hummed, even as she jotted down the last of Helena Ravenclaw’s word.

Helena half-smiled. “I’m not sure my story will do your research much good, but that’s what I know on his departure.”

“No, thank you, that’s already much more to work with than I had before. Now I know that whatever went wrong probably has to do with his mother.” that was a chilling thought.

“In any case, that was the only time I really heard that kind of thing from Salazar, in all the days I knew him. Now, I don’t know how he was when he was deep in his cups, because I was too young to join the adults at the time, but Salazar has ever been a kind-hearted uncle to me, and I hoped against hope that he’d come back to us for many years since.”


	13. Chapter 13

Hermione flooed back home, tossed her notepad on the kitchen table, took a long shower, then went to bed, trying not to think. She failed. she couldn’t stop the little wheel in her head, and down it grinded.

What did she know about Sal’s mother? Not that much, but she had helped Sal do a ritual for her health twice. Maybe she was sickly, it explained Sal visiting regularly. But if she’d died from a sickness, she doubted Sal would have been so angry, and at muggles specifically.

A witch burning, most probably.

She felt quite stupid that it had taken her literal years to come up with a theory about Salazar’s appalling fit of rage. What did it say about her that she had taken that long, plus getting prodded at by her friends to even start to find him excuses.

What was she going to do now?

Closure, Harry had suggested. But what closure was there in knowing that her irregular lover, one of her friends, even, had suffered a tragic loss, turned to alcohol and proceeded to a string of inebriated ranting that had lost him his three best friends? And then he’d made a very bad, alcohol fueled decision, and tried to rely on her instead, and she too had left him to hang.

The question was whether she could forgive Sal this singular lapse into grieving madness.

She liked to think herself forgiving. She had forgiven a lot since the war, she forgave Professor Snape, she forgave Draco Malfoy, she forgave Pansy Parkinson. She forgave the mass of Slytherin students, who were only children trust into their position by their parents or their circumstances.

She forgave Ron.

She did not forgive Voldemort, Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, their assorted Death Eaters, Rita Skeeter, or Dolores Umbridge…

What stopped her then, from forgiving Sal. He was obviously in the first category, not the second. Salazar Slytherin was forgivable.

He had tried to use her as a part of his genocidal blunder, yes, but he was so alcohol soaked, that he couldn’t have hexed the broad side of a barn, his ritual circle had been a joke, so much so that she was surprised it had even managed in summoning her.

She could insist that she wanted him to apologize properly before forgiving him, but what chance had he had to apologize, when he could only see her if they were in a ritual, which she had avoided to do any for more than two years.

No, the truth was that Hermione was afraid. She’d been afraid of how much Sal could hurt her for years.

Hermione was afraid of Sal the same way she’d been afraid of Ron before.

She was afraid because she liked Salazar, and she wasn’t sure he liked her back, and just like she had with Ron before, she had tried to find reasons, any reason, to leave the minefield that was attempting a relationship with a man she loved behind.

She was a Gryffindor, for Merlin’s sake. She was supposed to be courageous. She was supposed to be brave, chivalrous, adventurous. She was supposed to be fair.

She wasn’t supposed to discard a friend without ever telling him why.

She dressed back up, picked up her purse and headed out. She had candles to buy.

When Hermione came back from her emergency ritual-related shopping, Ron and Harry were back from work. Hermione’s notebook sat between them, obviously, they have read through it, and they have most probably come to the same conclusion as her about Sal’s mother.

Hermione didn’t even have to talk, she just lifted up her bag, and looked up toward her bedroom.

Harry and Ron nodd. “Go and get him, ‘Mione” Ron smiled.

Harry had his half smile on. Hermione felt their eyes on her until she disappeared up the stairs.

This time, Hermione didn’t bother undressing at all. Instead, she stepped in her circle as soon as she was done tracing and depositing her ingredients. She also had her wand in one hand, where she usually discarded it before the start of the ritual. This was not going to be an ordinary ritual.

It took a while for the ritual to activate and deposit her in the same space as Sal. It most probably had to do with the fact that she refused to touch herself. Instead she built up the fire inside her with all the memories of her previous rituals with Sal. There was more than enough fodder there to fuel a ritual on it’s own.

She had a hunch that Magic was biased about Sal and her, because in theory, stealing through time definitely should require more magic and effort on their parts.

When the ritual blended the space and deposited her back in front of Sal, she was first taken aback by his eyes. They looked wild, sunken and filled with despair.

Salazar promptly let go of his member as soon as he saw her, and stumbled forward, all but wrapping himself around Hermione’s legs. “You’re back. Thank the magic, you… You came back.”

Hermione blinked hard, even as she reflexively carded a hand through Sal’s long, dark hair. Her hand tangled in without her intending it to, and she pulled it back with a thoughtful frown, before rubbing her fingers together. They were greasy. That was the first time Hermione saw Salazar not perfectly groomed, she started to think that something was going sideways, but she didn’t know what.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Sal mumbled. “Please don’t leave me again, I can’t… I can’t lose you too, Hermione.”

Hermione took a deep breath. She had intended to get an apology out of Sal, She had been ready to hex him into it, and now she felt thrown off balance. Yet, she knew what she had to do, tackle the next item in her list. “Sal, look at me,” she whispered, and his head fell back, his grey eyes staring up at her, “I’m sorry too, Sal, for not leaving you a chance to explain. For thinking the worst of you at the first opportunity.”

Sal sobbed, and clutched Hermione’s legs tighter. Hermione was starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with his disturbingly house elf like actions. Sal’s babbling went on. “I did so many rituals. So many. I never want you not to appear again. You can’t leave me alone again, I won’t hold, Hermione, I won’t.”

All the words jammed themselves up in Hermione’s throat.

She hadn’t thought of that, Merlin, Sal, had always been there when she went into a ritual. how would she have felt if all of a sudden Sal got angry at her, and she couldn’t summon him again? What would she assume?

That he was dead. That she couldn’t summon him to share the ritual space because he’d ran out of rituals. Because their time to be together was spent.

That’s what Sal had thought had happened. A part of Hermione was calculating the odds. how come Sal’s side had skipped rituals, what did it say about their comparative number of sex rituals? Did the fact that Sal apparently had more rituals than her mean she was bound to die soon? Or was there another explanation for the weird discrepancy?

She shook her head, and shushed Sal gently.

She coaxed him to let go and stand, then shed her outer robes and gave them to Sal, who obediently put them on to cover himself.

Old English rebelled against her in her head, because she hadn’t practiced for too long, but she fought back and ripped out the necessary words out of her uncooperative memory. “I found a bit out… It was your mother, right?”

Sal closed his (beautiful,) blood-shot eyes. “They drowned her. Because of me” he lifelessly answered.

“It’s not your fault, Sal!”

“Yes it is!” Sal yelled, then he rocked back, and looked fixedly at Hermione, eyes full of fear. Hermione stayed still, and tilted her head a bit to coax him on. “They, she. They. She… recovered from the plague, all was well, so I went back to our School, and then… She didn’t respond to my owls, nothing. So, so I went back to see her and… But they’d already drowned her.”

Hermione didn’t gasp with surprise, it had been all too obvious that something like that had happened, and she couldn’t really grasp how horrible it had to have been. The second time Sal went back home to find the women in his life murdered. She spread her arms, and Sal stepped into her hug silently.

He sobbed against his shoulder for a while, then he stiffened and escaped her hug. “They murdered her because of me.”

“No.”

“Yes, they did, just like my Selwyn!” Sal shook his head. “She healed too fast, and they decided she must be a witch. My poor old mother.”

Hermione waited. Sal obviously was building up toward something she didn’t know, or like.

“Always accusing women, right. She must be a witch. If only… If only they could see. It was me all along, maybe they’d be alive today.”

Something huge and ugly dawned on her. “Sal… Sal, were they witches?”

Sal shook his head. It tore Hermione’s heart. “I was the witch all along. I thought I was hidden. I thought it was safe. I thought no one would see, but there were some signs, or, something… These monsters always blame the women”

Hermione closed her eyes. Her heart broke for Salazar. For the man who had magic, who believed magic was good and should be learned properly, and who lost the most important women in his life one after the other because of his own magic being attributed to powerless women who were just unlucky enough to be accused of witchcraft because Sal had wanted to help them.

Wanting to kill all the muggles, even though his loved ones had been ones… It made no sense. It was just a drunken man’s means to shift the guilt off himself for a while, but what had this resulted in? No more Hogwarts, no more Founder friends, no more Hermione.

No one left to help him face the guilt

Hermione tugged Sal back to the ground and wrapped herself around him as best she could. She spent the time until the ritual ended humming, or whispering quiet nothings in Sal’s hair. Repeating that she was there.

When the ritual space dissolved, Hermione stumbled down the stairs and into her best friends’ arms. And she cried, even as she tried to tell them what she’d learned.

**Author's Note:**

> I lurk on tumblr as [@cat-dragonne](https://cat-dragonne.tumblr.com)


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